1968-best

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – Greatest Hits, Vol. 2

More Smokey Robinson

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • These sides are tonally correct and highly resolving, as well as relaxed and smooth – Motown’s trademark phony upper midrange boost is gone
  • Here is the sound we wish we could find on more Motown records – believe me, we’ve tried
  • We don’t offer Greatest Hits albums often but this one sounds too good to ignore
  • 4 stars: “Scrumptious! All hits, except for two excellent B-sides: the exquisite ‘Choosey Beggar,’ a marvelous ballad with an Asiatic feel, and the poignant ‘Save Me’…”

Both sides are outstanding from start to finish. Motown’s trademark phony top end boost is gone. Most copies we played had some of that sound, including a boosted upper midrange, but our Hot Stampers will keep the problems under control while at the same time giving you presence, energy and space, layered on a good solid base of low end. (more…)

Otis Redding – The Dock of the Bay

More of the Music of Otis Redding

  • This outstanding pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, and plays as quietly as the originals Atco LPs ever do
  • It’s a well-recorded album – the better copies are big, rich and smooth, yet the vocals are clean, clear and present
  • We love Otis Redding’s albums, but finding clean copies of his classics is all but impossible these days
  • 5 stars: “…this is an impossible record not to love … Cropper chose his tracks well, selecting some of the strongest and most unusual among the late singer’s orphaned songs… No one could complain about the album then, and it still holds more than four decades later.”

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Albeniz / Suite Espanola / De Burgos – Such a Dynamic Recording

More of the Music of Isaac Albeniz

  • With two Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Suite Espanola sound remotely as good as it does on this amazing London pressing
  • The orchestral power on display is positively breathtaking – few recordings we know of are this DYNAMIC and EXCITING
  • Wilkie’s Decca Tree recording is overflowing with the kind of clear, spacious, realistic sound that can only be found on the best vintage vinyl LPs
  • Performances and sound like no other – De Burgos’s Suite Espanola is practically in a league of its own

Wow, is this record ever DYNAMIC! I would put it right up there with the most dynamic recordings we have played over the course of the last twenty five years. It also has tons of DEPTH. The brass is at the far back of the stage, just exactly where they would be placed in the concert hall, which greatly adds to the realism of the recording.

Note that careful VTA adjustment for a record with this kind of dynamic energy is a must. Having your front end carefully calibrated to this record is the only way to guarantee there is no distortion or shrillness in even the loudest passages.

What to Listen For

Clear castanets.

Big bass drum thwacks.

Crescendos that build to intense climaxes.

We Was Wrong (Already?)

The last time we did this shootout we noted:

The strings may not be quite as sweet as the best earlier Londons, but the trade off is well worth it when you hear a record with this kind of LIFE and so little distortion. Rich strings (or as rich as they can be in 1969, a good ten years after the amazingly Tubey Magical recordings of the ’50s).

This time around we heard plenty of Tubey Magic on our Shootout Winning pressing. Did we find a hotter one than last time? Are we doing a better job of bringing out that quality during playback?  Would this pressing hold its own against another recording made in Kingsway Hall a decade earlier?

Yes. No. Maybe? Who really knows?

We will leave it to the lucky customer who ends up with this killer copy to tell us. (more…)

Rimsky-Korsakov / Capriccio Espagnol & Enesco, Smetana

More of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings with Demo Disc Sound

Credit must go to my good audiophile friend Robert Pincus for turning me on to the Readers Digest sets in general and this set in particular. Most of it is no better than decent, but the best records in the set are superb, as you can read in our older review below.

A SUPERB White Hot side one coupled with a better than Super Hot (A++ to A+++) side two, back to back on one disc, is a surprise indeed.This is only the second time a disc from a Reader’s Digest box set has made it to the site, and we’re continuing with more exciting orchestral music — Capriccio Espagnol (side two) and the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 (side one) are the two longest pieces on record 8 of the set, and both of them are knockouts on this pressing.

This is truly DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND! Records do not get much more spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet. Kenneth Wilkinson was the man behind the board for many of these RDG recordings, this very one in fact, and as you will hear, he was pretty much in a league of his own as a recording engineer in the early days of stereo. This record should provide you with all the proof you need.

Play it up against the best of the RCAs, Londons and Mercs from the period and you will see what I mean. And of course it will completely DESTROY any pressing you may have on Heavy Vinyl, from any label, at any playback speed, of any music. (more…)

Aretha Franklin – Lady Soul

More Aretha Franklin

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • This superb copy of Aretha’s 1968 release boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout – reasonably quiet vinyl too 
  • Surprisingly rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, with plenty of natural ambience – Aretha’s vocals are present, breathy, and explosively dynamic
  • You’d need either a lot of copies, a lot of luck, or both, to come up with a pressing that sounds this good and plays this quietly
  • 5 stars: …an inspired blend of covers and originals from the best songwriters in soul and pop music…”

We’ve been playing a lot of Aretha Franklin records lately, working our way through her catalog, but it’s hard to find pressings that separate themselves from the pack to give you audiophile-friendly sound. Too many seem to be optimized more for the radio than for your hi-rez audio rig.

Every now and then, however, we luck into a copy that has the real soul magic in its grooves. On this album, that means Chain Of Fools and Aretha’s great version of Natural Woman will sound just the way you want them to. (more…)

Donovan – The Hurdy Gurdy Man

More of the Music of Donovan

  • The Hurdy Gurdy Man finally returns to the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout
  • Shockingly rich, spacious and lively, in the best tradition of vintage analog – Donovan’s recordings are hit and miss, but with Eddie Kramer at the controls, this one is clearly a hit
  • Among the supporting musicians were three soon-to-be members of Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page (who had already contributed to Donovan sessions in the past), John Paul Jones (likewise a veteran of sessions for Donovan), and John Bonham”
  • “… uplifting, accessible, pop-rock numbers with a splash of jazz or Caribbean flavor, rounding out an excellent album of the highest musicianship, lyric writing, and songcraft from an era.”
  • Some records are consistently too noisy to keep in stock no matter how good they sound. This is one of them.
  • We have a section for records that tend to be noisy, and it can be found here.

An outstanding pressing of what we consider Donovan’s best album, musically and sonically. The 1968 sound here is wonderful — rich, sweet, Tubey Magical and very, very Analog.

Donovan records tend to be hit or miss affairs, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that we could not find a bad track on either side of the album. Most are in fact quite wonderful.

Both Yellow Label Epics and Orange Label Epics fared well in our shootout. (We could find no Blue/ Black later labels to play.) Finding any pressing with clean surfaces was another matter, but we managed to have a pretty healthy group with which to do our shootout.

Some of these tracks may remind you more than a little of Pentangle. Danny Thompson, that band’s amazingly talented and unusually well recorded double bassist, just happens to be the bass player on the album. Go figure. Tony Carr does most of the drumming as he has on many of Donovan’s albums from the period. Needless to say, the rhythm section is first-rate.

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Lena Horne & Gabor Szabo – Lena & Gabor

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

Reviews and Commentaries for Gabor Szabo

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides this copy sounds right from top to bottom
  • Some of the most UNPROCESSED and REAL sounding jazzy pop we have ever played
  • A True Sleeper from 1968 – love the choice of material, love the players, love Lena, love the album!
  • “The contrast of Horne’s full-throated voice and Szabo’s unconventional, modal guitar playing is mesmerizing…”

As music lovers and audiophiles this was a truly marvelous discovery for us years ago. True, we had known about the album for a long time, but as a practical matter it had been all but impossible to find enough clean copies to do a shootout — until now of course. We had a big pile to work with, a pile that took about five years to acquire, and one that includes both Buddah and Skye pressings.

Dave Sanders, a name I was not familiar with, brilliantly engineered the album as well as other favorites of ours, including Szabo’s 1969, Gilberto’s Windy and McFarland’s Does The Sun Really Shine On The Moon? It’s hard to find a recording he did that isn’t full of Tubey Magic, huge studio space and right-on-the-money instrumental timbres.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

This is the most realistic drum kit I have heard on a non-jazz album in my life. The drum sound on the first track is exactly the sound we all know from hanging around small clubs and our friends’ garage bands. There is simply no audible processing on any part of the kit. The drums are centered behind the vocals and lead instruments, with what sounds like to me the barest of miking, surrounded by just the right amount of unbaffled studio space. (more…)

Horace Silver Quintet – Serenade To A Soul Sister

  • This copy was clearly cut with super-low distortion mastering equipment, and boy does it help the sound
  • Rudy Van Gelder did an outstanding job as usual engineering these 1968 quintet sessions, some of which include one of our favorite tenor men, Stanley Turrentine
  • 4 1/2 stars: “One of the last great Horace Silver albums for Blue Note, Serenade to a Soul Sister is also one of the pianist’s most infectiously cheerful, good-humored outings… it’s hard to argue with musical results as joyous and tightly performed as Serenade to a Soul Sister.”

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Rimsky-Korsakov / Capriccio Espagnol & Le Coq D’Or / Danon

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

 

  • White Hot Stamper sound for Capriccio Espagnol, with a tremendously exciting performance
  • Big stage, great ENERGY, lots of hall ambience and solid orchestral weight – hard to fault!
  • Orchestral music doesn’t get much more EXCITING or COLORFUL than Capriccio Espagnol
  • If you like Reiner’s Scheherazade – and who doesn’t? – you are sure to be knocked out by this recording

For your listening pleasure, we proudly offer our music loving fans a SUPERB sounding White Hot Capriccio Espagnol, performed with passion and precision by the Royal Philharmonic under the direction of Oscar Danon. This is only the second disc from a Reader’s Digest box set to make it to the site, but what a disc it is — orchestral music doesn’t get much more EXCITING or COLORFUL than Capriccio Espagnol. It’s truly a knockout on this pressing: White Hot Stamper As Good As It Gets sound.

This is what we mean by DEMO DISC sound. Records do not get much more spacious, open, transparent, rich or sweet. Kenneth Wilkinson was the man behind the board for many of these RDG recordings, this very one in fact, and as you will hear, he was pretty much in a league of his own as a engineer in the early days of stereo. This record is proof positive of his uncanny recording skills. 

Play it against the best of the RCAs, Londons and Mercs from the period and you will see what I mean. And of course it will completely DESTROY any pressing you may have on Heavy Vinyl, from any label, at any playback speed, of any music. (more…)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – In My Own Dream

More Butterfield Blues Band

More Electric Blues

  • An outstanding copy of the band’s 1968 release with solid Double Plus (A++) sonic grades on both sides
  • Like most of the group’s albums on these early pressings, the sound is full-bodied and smooth, with prodigious amounts of bottom end
  • Notable as the last Butterfield record with original members Mark Naftalin and Elvin Bishop who both moved on to solo ventures after its release
  • “More to the point, this album represented a new version of the band being born… there was a widely shared spotlight for the players, and more of a jazz influence on this record than had ever been heard before from the group…The playing is impressive…”

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